"But Don't Send Me Jesus..."

"...He's only a man."

I will have the pleasure of seeing the mighty GWAR again late next month in Massachusetts, courtesy of the gentleman who shared my first GWAR experience many moons ago. Earlier today one of his friends asked what GWAR was and beyond answering that GWAR was a state of mind, dammit, I felt I had to cast about YouTube to find a representative answer. Fortunately, some kind soul had posted the music video the band made for "Meat Sandwich," which showcases pretty much everything I love GWAR: ridiculous costumes, wanton violence, roving meat orgies, cannibalism, and - of course - a one on one basketball game between Oderus Urungus and Jesus. Ladies and gentlemen, "Meat Sandwich":

GWAR at Irving Plaza

GWAR, it seems has a pattern when it comes to opening bands: one thrash revival act, one "core" group, run for an hour and a half and then hit the stage. Two years ago, it was Municipal Waste and The Red Chord; this time around, we had Toxic Holocaust and Kingdom of Sorrow. The format might be slipping a bit: Toxic Holocaust is fun, but they're no Municipal Waste and I know I liked The Red Chord better than the modern metalcore stylings of Kingdom of Sorrow, a side project for guys from Hatebreed, Crowbar, and (because Kirk Windstein is off touring with Down) Type O Negative.

While taking refuge at the bar during Kingdom of Sorrow's set and discussing Guy Kozowyk's take on the origins of modern metalcore with my usual concert crew, I came to an important realization: one that could and should change this iffy form of music into some far more palatable. It's simple: anything that's not a breakdown (and I have no problem with the breakdowns: you can keep ripping off groove metal as much as you'd like) should be played at the same speed as a Slayer riff. Can you imagine how great that'd be? Instead of chopping along on eighth notes, all of those guitarists could tune in to the true brutality of sixteenth and thirty-second notes, channeling some Slayer-like energy into their lifeless riffs and drastically decreasing their suckitude at the same time. Think about it: everything tastes better with Slayer. Everything. And as an added inducement towards implementation, I say we ban Kingdom of Sorrow from using their kickass album graphic until they start applying The Slayer Method to their material.

So much for the openers. GWAR's performance was an evening of solid, sleazy entertainment. Three areas of note: first, GWAR seems to have finally realized that playing in clubs means people in the back can't see what's going down on the stage, and being a visual band, decided to fix the problem by using a video screen. It wasn't a complete success - some of the graphics looked like they were taken out of a digital special effects kit circa 1999 - but it helped give a bit more context to the action (unfortunately still rendered partially invisible by the heads of the taller people in front of me) on the stage. Speaking of action, we had a biology lesson: it turns out that breasts are full of green fluid. Who knew?

Second, Dave Brockie seems to love turning the words of his older material into complete mush. I'm not sure if it's laziness, material fatigue, or just a way to make fun of the bohabs, but the lyrics of the verses of "Sick of You," for example, were a wordless garble.

Third, Sleazy P. Martini came back for the tour. He set up the show's theme, killed a bunch of people in a revival of "Slaughterama" (easily the show's highlight, with the numerous faithful in the crowd supplanting Martini's role as host by shouting out the answers to each round's question), and announced his candidacy for President of the United States. I think you should vote for him.

WANT: Dethklok and GWAR Action Figures

I'm not a big action figures guy (I believe my collection, such as it is, consists of a Brainiac 5 figure my wife got for me at a McDonalds), but Deciblog still got me all hot and bothered with the headline, "Dethklok & Gwar Immortalized In Plastic" (all the more timely for its appearance mere hours before my next GWAR experience), noting the creation/recreation of Dethklok and GWAR action figures by New Jersey manufacturer Shocker Toys. Unfortunately, what they didn't mention is that a.) you can only order the figures by calling one of their salesmen and b.) their website looks like it jumped straight out of Google's 2001 index. Dammit people: it's the 21st century. I shouldn't have to talk to anyone if I don't want to and I should be able to spend my money online without feeling like my credit card is going to get a venereal disease.

Secrets of the Photo Pass

Starting last fall, I've been getting photo passes to the shows I review. Photo passes are interesting things: they give you the liberty to not only carry a camera into a venue (which seems to be a pretty common privilege these days, when everyone has a camera on their cell phone), but to go up in front of the security barricades and take pictures of the band while you dodge crowd surfers and the security personnel in charge of catching them. There are also a few universal rules:

• If you're photographing a well-known band (i.e., most headliners and a few major players at the end of the opening list), you'll also
  
• Time up front seems to be universally limited to three songs, a rule that seems fairly arbitrary, but does at least give you a lot of practice in taking effective shots quickly. My guess is that the three song rule is a compromise between event organizers, security staff and bands to get the maximum amount of publicity with the minimum amount of distraction. Also, unless you're photographing a band with a long stage show like GWAR, you've probably taken every useful shot you can get in three songs. When I took pictures at Destruction's show in February, there was basically no security to speak of until people started stage diving during Municipal Waste's set, but I kept to the three song rule for each band because I ran out of subjects.
  
• Flashes are almost always verboten. It doesn't stop people in the crowd from using them and given the number of stage lights some bands use the rule doesn't always make a lot of sense, but the rule still stands and event organizers won't hesitate to call you on it.
• There will be at least one fanboy who sings along with the songs. Many times this person is me, although I always spot at least one other photographer screaming out (for example) the lyrics to "Valhall Awaits Me" while he takes pictures of Amon Amarth. Singing photographers (and headbanging photographers, who are a subset of singing photographers) stand in direct contrast to everyone else taking pictures in the security well because they actually seem to care about the music. The first show I shot with a pass was Gigantour 2006, where there were a whole gaggle of photographers in the security well. After the three song limit ended, two-thirds of them retired to the quiet confines of the venue's green room instead of, say, enjoying the show from the floor. In other words, there seems to be a definite line between photographers who are fans...and photographers who are not. I have a theory that there's a correlation between these two types of photographers and the amount of jadedness in the industry, but I'm still working on evidence.
• Some people will have point-and-shoot cameras, some will have high-powered SLRs. I'm of the former variety, because a.) I can't afford a larger camera and b.) carrying around a big camera is a pain in the ass when you're standing in a room full of people trying to beat the crap out of each other. Come to think of it, this last point might relate back to the jadedness point above.

In the four shows I've shot so far, I've noticed three things: first, my love for venues with lighting rigs that actually illuminate the stage instead of masking it is undying and eternal, because I get so many better pictures that way. I may, in fact, love the Nokia Theatre for just this reason. Second, to take pictures of death metal bands requires extreme patience, as you struggle to capture a shot where the musician isn't moving too much but still looks cool. Third, bands with lead singers who do nothing but sing are the bane of my existence, because the singer, having no instrument to him or her down, charges around the stage and makes so many erratic movements as to make taking good pictures impossible.

GWAR!!!

The last time I saw GWAR, it was the Spring of 1999 and I was 17 years old (go ahead, do the math). My friend Blueguy and I drove to Worcester, MA with his friend Miken (no one I knew at the time had a real name and we liked it, dammit) to see the very first New England Hardcore and Metal Festival (by the way, I cannot tell you how excited it gets me to find that there’s a Wikipedia page on the NEHMF. I love that damn site) at the Palladium. GWAR headlined after a long day of bands, buying things, getting a free poster promoting the release of IX Equilibrium, meeting a GWAR slave (roadie) in the parking lot, meeting members of GWAR and having them sign my copy of This Toilet Earth and watching Miken construct sculptures out of cigarettes and phlegm (truly awe-inspiring). I could probably write a whole post just recapping memories from that day, but that’s off point; I bring this experience up for two reasons: first, GWAR rocked very, very hard and sent me home, much to the surprise of my parents, dyed a mixture of blue, red and green and second, I finally had a chance to get a reprise two weeks ago when GWAR headlined at Irving Plaza in NYC.

Outside of what I mention in the review, two things of note about this show:

1. The barrier that concert security sets up between the audience and the stage – the one that marks off the zone where crowd surfers fear to tread – broke two songs into GWAR’s set and overall, security had a hard time keeping crowd-control barriers from collapsing. Normally this problem would effect me not at all, but unfortunately I was in that zone (or is it pit?) taking pictures – at least until security decided to kick all of the photographers out of the pit and back into the audience for our safety, leaving me a good 30 or 40 feet away from the stage without a good angle. In retrospect, it was a good thing I didn’t make a scene – the same security crew worked the Nokia Theatre three nights later when I went to cover Children of Bodom. I’m not too impressed with Irving Plaza, however.
   
   
2. Before the show started, people started tossing condom balloons off the balcony – most likely made from the condoms someone was handing out in the lobby. I wish I had taken pictures, because there’s really nothing more amusing than people smacking around a balloon meant to cover someone’s genitals.